Chocolate Cake with Hitler: A Nazi Childhood

by Emma Craigie

Genres: World War II; War & Military

Synopsis

Chocolate Cake with Hitler tells the remarkable story of Helga Goebbels, twelve-year-old daughter of the Nazi Party's head of propaganda, who spent the last ten days of her life cooped up in a bunker in Berlin with Adolf Hitler.

Release date: September 1, 2011

Publisher: Octopus

Print pages: 208

Sample

I’M SITTING WITH PAPA on a bench beside the sea. I must be about three years old. The sun is in my eyes. There’s a man in a white hat taking photographs. Papa is laughing. The breeze is puffing his white shirt but I’m warm because of the sun and because I’m leaning right into Papa and his arm is firmly around me. I’m as comfortable as can be and it’s as if I realise for the first time that Papa is special. He is not just someone in the background. He is here and I am safe with him.


The moment is quickly over. Uncle Leader, who has been watching us, says “My turn!” and Papa leaps off the bench and Uncle Leader sits down beside me. He wants his photograph taken with me too. I hardly know Uncle Leader. He sits right up next to me, and I have to swing my leg away and across my other leg so that he’s not touching. I know he wants to put his arm around me like Papa. He’s breathing over me, and I try to ignore him.

“You, Helga Goebbels, are my favourite girl in the whole world. If only you were twenty years older!”

The man in the white hat is laughing. Papa is laughing. I am not going to take any notice. Uncle Leader leans closer, his smell like the furniture in the servants’ quarters. I can pretend he’s not there. I turn right away and stare at the camera.


I think this is my earliest memory.

I am sitting in a high chair and Mummy is sitting on a chair facing me. She is leaning forward and holding both my hands in one of hers. In the other hand she has a spoon which she’s bringing towards me through the air.


“Choo, choo,” she says brightly. “Here comes the train. Here comes the train.”

On the spoon is a wobbling grey blob. It smells like the old cloths Cook boils up on the stove. I know the train trick and when the metal spoon reaches my mouth I keep my lips tightly shut. Mummy presses the spoon against them and I shake my head in an attempt to fend it off. “Come on, Helga, here comes the train. The train wants to come into the station.” She’s squashing my hands. The metal of the spoon is jamming against my lips. I will not open my mouth. I will not open my mouth. The spoon presses harder and I taste the damp, soapy paste. Mummy pushes the spoon in. A grainy lump hits the back of my throat. I retch and spit.


I’m in a white dress with short sleeves. My sister Hilde is wearing a nicer one. Hers has a dark pink sash and little pink rosebuds around the bottom. My dress is plain, my arms are cold and my feet hurt in my gleaming new patent leather shoes.


We are in an enormous room with a sky-high ceiling. You could pack about a million people in here – all the cheering crowds in the square outside – if they stood on each other’s shoulders or lay down on top of each other like sardines but there are only a few shiny guests so it feels quite empty. Men in uniforms, ladies in hats and heels. I can’t see any other children.


We join a queue to shake hands with Uncle Leader. It is his birthday. I don’t want to shake his hand. I’ve done it before and I know it feels like a dead slug. Hilde is in front of me, littlest first. Lucky Helmut has been left at home because he’s just a baby. Hilde doesn’t mind, though. She shakes his hand and does a big toppling curtsy and sets off smartly for the cakes. And now it’s my turn. My best bet is not to look at him. Papa is behind me, hands folded patiently, with a fake ha-ha-ha-isn’t-she-a-one smile on his face. I step sideways and look out at the room. I can see the long table of cakes, the big windows, the golden chandeliers. There’s a band playing outside. I hold my arms together in front of my chest so that Uncle Leader can’t take my hand. He bends down towards me. Cabbagey breath. I’m backed up against the wall. Everyone is waiting for me. I make my move quickly – a bob of a curtsy – I don’t even glance at him – and speed off after Hilde. She has reached the cakes. I’m just deciding whether to go for the chocolate layer cake or a gingerbread heart when Papa comes up beside us. He’s not laughing now; his cheeks are peeled back in a toothy smile. He bends down and whispers in my ear.


“Rude girls don’t get cakes.”




Sunday 22 April, 1945


I am lying on a bottom bunk with Heide who has finally fallen asleep next to me with her head nestled in my armpit and her feet on top of my shins. I’m never going to get to sleep like this. We’re pitched in together because the mattress has a ravine in the middle. The imprint of all the soldiers who have slept here before us. No one else would share with Heide because she wriggles. There are only two bunk beds between the six of us – Hedda is above us and Hilde is above Holde and Helmut is on a blanket on the floor. He’s delighted. When we realised that there weren’t enough beds for us he declared, “All German people have to make sacrifices in the hour of darkness.” He’s always pretending to be like Papa. Anyway, he managed to fall straight to sleep which is pretty incredible considering there’s only a thin army blanket between him and the concrete floor. Mummy says they’ll find us more beds tomorrow. I hope they find ones with better mattresses. I can’t read because the only light is a wall light and it would disturb the others if I turned it on.


We arrived in the early evening. We’ve only been back in Berlin for a couple of days, and we thought we were going to stay in our bunker underneath the State Palace, but Papa suddenly came to fetch us this afternoon. He has decided that the best place for us to be is the Leader Bunker, or to be more precise, the Upper Bunker which leads to the Leader Bunker. It’s much less comfortable than the bunker at home, no carpets, bare walls – at least in our bedroom – smaller beds, rougher sheets, thinner blankets.


Our Leader has come to the heart of Berlin to lead the final fight against the Russian hordes. We are here to show our support for him. Papa says we are very lucky to have this opportunity to demonstrate our loyalty. He says it is a very important moment in history and it is a great honour to take part in it. Our bravery is an example to all the German people. We are very close to victory, he says. Personally I don’t think it really counts as being brave when you have no choice.


It’s just the six of us and Papa and Mummy. We left both grannies and both governesses behind. When Papa phoned Swan Island to tell us to come to Berlin it was Hubi’s day off and Miss Schroeter and Granny Behrend had to help us pack, which was quite hard because Hubi’s the only one who really knows where everything is. Mind you, we didn’t need a lot. Papa had instructed that we should only bring one set of night things and one toy each as we are not going to be here long. We all brought our dolls – I brought Elsa – except of course Helmut, who brought a tank. Granny B. kept crying, and saying the same things over and over, “Tell your mother I must see her one more time. Give her a big kiss from me. I told her, I told her it would end in disaster. She should never have married him.” It set us all off. Granny B. is always really rude about Papa. Mummy says it’s because they don’t see eye to eye. She says Granny B. is ridiculously melodramatic, and that the war will soon be won and we’ll all be back together again. I don’t know which house we’ll live in after the war. I guess that it will take a while to clear up Berlin, so probably Swan Island would be best. Hopefully we will spend the whole summer there. I want to do lots of riding. I’m missing Rosamund already.


As soon as Hubi got back from her day off and heard that we’d left, she came to Berlin to find us. She arrived just as we were leaving the State Palace bunker. Helmut adores Hubi and burst out, without thinking as usual, “Are you coming with us to the Leader Bunker?”, which was quite embarrassing because Mummy didn’t say anything. She obviously didn’t want Hubi to come. I suppose there’s not enough room. Hubi looked at Mummy and Mummy turned to us and said, “Come on, children, hurry up. Goodbye, Hubi.” And Helmut called cheerily, “See you soon, Hubi!” as if we were off on a holiday.


We came to the bunker by car even though it’s only a short walk from the State Palace. It’s impossible to walk anywhere in Berlin nowadays. The pavements are covered with fallen bricks and broken glass. In some places a car can barely get down the middle of the road. And it was pouring with rain.

Mummy and Papa went ahead in the first car and us children in the second. I sat in the front. The driver was a funny-looking man with the squashed-in nose of a boxer and enormous ears. He wasn’t one of the regular drivers. He annoyed me because he did that thing of talking to us in a way I just knew he wouldn’t if our parents were there; trying to extract information he wouldn’t dare ask them.

“I expect you’re excited about going to the Leader Bunker.”

“Oh yes!” said Helmut. “We’re going to see Uncle Leader and there’ll be lots of generals and soldiers. We’ll be right in the thick of it.”

“Will Miss Braun be there?”

I wasn’t going to answer his questions. I am sure it is going to be secret exactly who is in the Leader Bunker. And Mummy is always telling us to be careful about what we say, especially to servants, but I think Helmut is still too young to understand why. He’s nine and a half.


“Do you mean Auntie Eva?” Helmut asked solemnly. “Oh yes, I think she’ll be there.”

“Auntie Eva, eh!”

“She’s not our real aunt,” Helmut explained. “We just call her Auntie because she’s a good friend of our family.”

“You know her well, do you?”

“Quite well.”

We’ve only met her a few times and we haven’t seen her for ages – Helmut was just babbling now.

“I’ve heard she’s very beautiful.”

I don’t think Helmut knew what to say to that.

Despite the rain, half the sky was glowing red from the Russian fires in the east. Heide thought it was the sunset and was clapping her hands because the sky looked so beautiful. She doesn’t know east from west. Mummy tells them that the sound of the guns is thunder and yet they never seem to wonder why there are thunderstorms every day, even when it’s sunny. I feel very alone.


We drove past one of the signs that Papa has had painted all over the city: “Every German will defend his capital. We shall stop the Red hordes at the walls of our Berlin.” The driver didn’t seem to be too worried about the Red hordes. “Ivan” he called them. “Ivan drinks so much vodka that he’s more likely to shoot himself in the foot than to shoot a German soldier!” He laughed loudly to himself.  


So many buildings have been shelled. Some have collapsed completely, and others are smashed open exposing flowery wallpaper and fireplaces and doors that lead nowhere. When we drove in from Swan Island the other day we saw mothers in overcoats cooking on open fires in the ruins and dirty barefoot children crouching around. I don’t know what food they’ve got; there are hardly any shops still standing. We drove past one house which was on fire – huge yellow flames were billowing up out of the windows – and the houses either side standing solid as if nothing was happening. Helmut said he saw a dead body strung up on a lamppost. He might have been lying.  


We got out of the cars in the courtyard of the Empire Chancellery. It has been badly hit. There are huge holes in the roof of the building and the courtyard is heaped with rubble and burnt-out cars. All the glass in the windows has been broken, which gives the place the look of a skull. Papa says we shouldn’t worry too much about all the damage because once we’ve won the war we will be able to rebuild the city bigger and better than ever before.  


We went through a tall thin doorway at the back of the cou. . .